Peace candidate.
Remember, this is the guy that thought we should drop a nuclear bomb on a Hurricane.
Paul Krugman (via email):
But when I look into the larger picture of Trump administration policy — not just the attack on Iran but domestic policies, especially the administration’s seemingly irrational hatred of renewable energy and its determination to keep America burning fossil fuels no matter what — I keep coming back to the huge influence now being wielded by oil money.
I don’t mostly mean the domestic U.S. oil industry, although them too. The U.S. oil and gas sector spent large sums helping Republicans in the 2024 election, while giving very little to Democrats.
But what really stands out is the centrality of oil money from the Persian Gulf, money that has been crucial in two areas: Trump’s international economic schemes and his personal enrichment.
So when Trump boasts about the foreign investment he’s bringing to America, the reality is mostly that Gulf petrostates have said — with dubious credibility — that they will make big investments. That puts his boasts in a somewhat different light, doesn’t it?
And then there’s Trump’s relentless use of his office to enrich himself and his family. As the New York Times editorial board has documented, Trump has raked in at least $1.4 billion since returning to the White House. The biggest single piece of that total is Qatar’s gift to him of a $400 million jet. Most of the rest has come from sales of cryptocurrency. We don’t know who the buyers of Trump crypto are, but it seems likely that Gulf oil money has accounted for a large share. The Wall Street Journal reports that an Abu Dhabi royal secretly invested $500 million in World Liberty Financial, the center of the Trump crypto empire.
Meanwhile Jared Kushner, the First Son-in-Law, has been acting as one of the U.S. government’s chief negotiators on the Middle East while also raising large sums of money for his personal investment firm from investors in the region, especially the Saudi government’s Public Investment Fund. That fund is led by Crown Prince Mohammed bin Salman, who is widely believed to have had a critical journalist, Jamal Khashoggi, dismembered with a bone saw.
One recurrent theme in Trump’s economic speeches has been boasting about the size of the foreign investment pledges he has received as part of his tariff strategy. “In 12 months,” he declared in the State of the Union, “I secured commitments for more than $18 trillion pouring in from all over the globe.”
Nobody knows where that $18 trillion number, which he uses all the time, comes from. The actual announced pledges by foreign governments to invest in the U.S. add up to only about $6 trillion, and many of these pledges are vague statements of intent rather than serious commitments. Indeed, the deal with Europe may well be unraveling in part because Trump’s tariffs have been ruled illegal.
But what’s especially interesting is who has made these investment pledges, such as they are:
Each of the major Gulf petrostates has pledged to invest more than the whole European Union, even though they have far smaller economies. Here’s another visualization:
So when Trump boasts about the foreign investment he’s bringing to America, the reality is mostly that Gulf petrostates have said — with dubious credibility — that they will make big investments. That puts his boasts in a somewhat different light, doesn’t it?
And then there’s Trump’s relentless use of his office to enrich himself and his family. As the New York Times editorial board has documented, Trump has raked in at least $1.4 billion since returning to the White House. The biggest single piece of that total is Qatar’s gift to him of a $400 million jet. Most of the rest has come from sales of cryptocurrency. We don’t know who the buyers of Trump crypto are, but it seems likely that Gulf oil money has accounted for a large share. The Wall Street Journal reports that an Abu Dhabi royal secretly invested $500 million in World Liberty Financial, the center of the Trump crypto empire.
Meanwhile Jared Kushner, the First Son-in-Law, has been acting as one of the U.S. government’s chief negotiators on the Middle East while also raising large sums of money for his personal investment firm from investors in the region, especially the Saudi government’s Public Investment Fund. That fund is led by Crown Prince Mohammed bin Salman, who is widely believed to have had a critical journalist, Jamal Khashoggi, dismembered with a bone saw.
If you were working in a genetic lab, you would hardly be able to come up with a worse combination for the leader of a nuclear superpower.